


the weight of dust

by misskatieleigh



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi Rook my angry determined son, Character Study, Original Character Death(s), character backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 08:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12979731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misskatieleigh/pseuds/misskatieleigh
Summary: ‘I can do this.’ That was his first and last thought as he stepped up to the recruitment agent.‘Recruitment’ was a generous term.





	the weight of dust

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry.

‘I can do this.’ That was his first and last thought as he stepped up to the recruitment agent. 

‘Recruitment’ was a generous term. Looking around at some of the gaunt faces that made up the rest of the line, Bodhi thought ‘slavers’ fit better. 

Of course, not everyone was somber, some of the boys jostling each other for position, chattering about what rank they would be appointed. He wanted to shake them, send them back to their mothers and make them see how Jedha was slowly dying under the Empire's thumb. 

Yet here he was, straightening his shoulders under the attention of some man dressed in grey, who didn't spare him more than a second glance. It didn't matter; pride was just another thing he couldn't afford.

He thought of his mother, growing weaker and weaker by the day, her illness a mystery to the healers. He thought of their neighbor, Minha, who promised to watch over her, if only he could send a few credits back. He thought of his father, buried somewhere in the kyber mine, how they hadn't been able to wrap his body or say the prayers. Bodhi still kissed his fingers and pressed them to his heart whenever he passed the entrance, hiding the gesture from the ‘troopers standing guard. He was gone, part of the Force now, no matter what Bodhi did. 

“Name?”

“Bodhi Rook. I, um, I'd like to fly. Sir.” Bodhi fought the urge to curl his shoulders forward, staring straight ahead.

“The Empire will assign you according to your skills.” He gestured to Bodhi with the stylus of his datapad. “Board the shuttle, recruit.”

A stone settled in Bodhi's stomach, weighing him down, but not enough to keep his feet still. All other paths were blocked, anyway.

***

‘I can do this.’

He cried when they cut his hair, the clippers biting at his scalp and drawing blood. They didn't know, he assured himself, what it meant to his people or himself. He watched the strands fall around his shoulders and whispered a prayer in the back of his mind. It would end up in the incinerator one way or the other, burn up into nothingness. That would have to be enough, what should have felt like lightness only serving to drag his head down and his eyes averted.

“You'll be glad to be rid of that, make your showers shorter at least.” The man that handed him a stack of uniforms looked familiar, thick eyebrows and brown skin, looked kind, thick knuckles and long fingers. He wasn't Jedhan, but he carried sand from some world in his cracked places. “It gets easier, as you go along.”

Bodhi nodded, and held the kindness in his heart, to look over on the long nights. 

The academy was perpetual motion, a routine of non-routine punctuated by periods of sleep where he lay with his eyes open, unable to quiet his mind surrounded by row upon row of boys restlessly shifting.

Someone would stifle a moan, followed by the thud of a boot thrown through the darkness to land against the durasteel frame of another bed. Bodhi didn't understand where others found arousal in all this, his own cock lying soft against his thigh beneath unfamiliar clothes.

He didn’t understand the point of most things the Empire found value in. Would the straight corners of his bed feed a starving family? Would boots shined to a heavy gloss save his mother from wasting away inside her own body? The answer to every question he imagined was no, but he had made his bed (perfect straight lines, nary a wrinkle) and now he had to lie in it. He didn’t need to sleep.

***

The first time they put a blaster in his hand he faltered. He had hunted, with his father, when the herds of curvehorned sheep came through the valley below Jedha City. They didn't shoot anything, instead laying noose traps to catch a misstepped foot. Then his father would come, with a long knife sharpened until a single piece of hair dropped over it would split cleanly. “Kill quickly and give honor. Thank the Force for sustaining us.”

The Empire knew nothing of honor. 

***

‘I can do this.’

TIE fighters were nothing like speeders. He had raced (been caught and fined, but that was in kinder days) back on Jedha, but the controls were different. Even simulations felt like rolling around in some wild tumble, his stomach trying to escape through his throat. He failed, over and over, the screen screaming red in his face. 

His flight instructor was red too, pointing him toward the controls of a lumbering cargo shuttle. The solidness of it settled in his bones, weight and purpose that responded to the shift of his hands. It felt like an escape, a place in the Empire that wouldn’t carry the memory of dead bodies. 

His inner voice said, ‘I can do this’, and for the first time it felt real. 

***

He learned to sleep. He learned to let down his guard, keep his hair shorn and his anxiety down. He made friends, found a knack for sabacc that earned him a few extra credits and more favors in exchange. He learned to live and to ignore the weight of doubt and worry that lived in his gut. 

He forgot to hate them, for a while. 

***

The first time he went back to Jedha was on a cargo run. It didn’t look much different, near the shuttle landing pad, perhaps a few more ‘troopers patrolling than before, but memory was a questionable thing. He couldn’t tell if the streets looked dirtier, or if it was just in comparison to the gleaming halls of the academy. His mother smiled when she saw him, opening her arms to accept him back, though her hands trembled against his uniform. Minha made him sit and wait while she brewed tea, and when it was ready, the three of them sat around the table, silent until Minha broke. 

“So. You missed the spring festival. It was smaller than normal, but the Guardians put on a lovely presentation. Some of that Partisan group made a bit of commotion at the end, but the ‘troopers sorted them out, thank the Force for the Empire to watch over us.” Her eyes kept wandering to the patch on his arm, the Imperial crest that made him think of a target locked onto him at all times. His mother patted his hand and smiled, softly, reaching up once to touch the back of his head, her fingers sliding over the short hair there. 

He opened his mouth to explain, but all the excuses caught in his throat, strangling him into silence. Minha refilled his cup, even though he’d barely taken a sip, nudging the small jar of sweetener over to him. “Aesh is getting married soon, to some girl that came on a pilgrimage to the temple. And there was flour at the market, so we can have bread with dinner, and maybe some root stew.”

Bodhi cleared his throat, the spices from the tea lingering on his tongue and choking him with their familiarity. “Oh. I can’t... I’m not staying. I have to get back to the shuttle soon.” He could see his mother’s face fall, out of the corner of his eye, and the coldness of her fingers pulled back from his hand. Minha looked flustered, but she recovered quickly, replacing his mother’s hand with her warm one. “Of course, dear. We’re glad to have had the chance to see you.”

Bodhi took a sip of his tea, gone cold and bitter. He hugged Minha, the warm spiced scent of her pressed against the crisp line of his uniform. He hugged his mother, smaller than he remembered her, and it felt like she was a ghost. She whispered ‘goodbye’ against his shoulder and the words settled in his heart like a promise. 

“Goodbye, Amma.”

***

His mother died on a Centaxday, three standard weeks later. The Empire allowed him two days leave, including travel. He was on Jedha for twelve hours, long enough to bring her body to the temple for a blessing and to lay the bonfire down in the valley. Minha sang, high and echoing off the upward swell of the mesa and he knelt while the winds brushed the smoke into his skin. 

When he walked back to the shuttle the Guardian on watch at the temple nodded to him in greeting, not acknowledging the soot on his face. 

“May the Force of others be with you, brother.”

Bodhi dipped his head, the response lost on his tongue. He kissed his fingers and pressed them to his chest, remembering his father. In his absence, they had loaded his ship with cargo, sealed crates that he wasn’t allowed to open. The shuttle’s messaging system directed him to Eadu Station. 

Bodhi stripped out of his borrowed clothes, unable to bear wearing the Empire’s gray in his grief. His lungs creaked when he breathed, weighed down by ashes.

***

He refused to let them cut his hair after that.

***

Eadu Station was a nightmare. Every combination of wind and rain lashed the landing platform, no matter what time of day. Not many pilots could make the landing cleanly, the battered edges of their shuttles a testament to past collisions. Inside was as clean and clinical as every other Imperial station, and Bodhi felt some small joy at dripping wetly down the hall, even as a cleaning droid followed behind him, beeping angrily. 

It became part of his regular rotation, and the chill of the place gathered in his joints, stiffening his knees and his fingers. 

His hair grew, reaching his shoulders a year after Amma’s death. He never missed a scheduled arrival, never lost his cargo, never opened the crates. They ignored his hair and increased his pay. He sent it to Minha. He earned more credits at the sabacc table. 

One of the scientists stationed there, a man named Galen Erso, began talking to him. A small joke about the menu in the cantina. A casual question about his homeworld. A smile, amongst the dour faces stationed there. Eventually, Bodhi found himself answering. 

***

Bodhi set down on Jedha and flipped through the briefing on his holopad. Some trouble in the city was delaying the shipment. He had six hours before scheduled departure. Bodhi wrapped a scarf around his face and wandered into the market. 

It smelled like home, but false at the same time. The vendors in the market darted their eyes around, wary instead of welcoming. The pilgrims were the same, every sort of species mingling and looking toward the temple.

Bodhi looked up as he passed the gate, unguarded for the first time in his life. A ‘trooper marched past, glancing down at the patch on his shoulder. “Move along, pilot. The temple is closed.”

Bodhi kept moving, his feet automatically guiding him toward his house, Minha’s house. He climbed over a collapsed wall, someone’s chickens pecking through a loaf of bread left out on the table. He didn’t notice how quiet it was until he found Minha’s door hanging half off the hinges. 

Bodhi kept walking, shuffling past a Tognath half blocking the alley that lead back to the market. 

“Excuse me,” he whispered, instinct bearing past the weight of absence on his shoulders.

The Tognath hissed, the breathing apparatus covering its face garbling the words. Bodhi pulled the scarf higher on his face, the winds picking up to deposit dust and grit in his hair. 

He didn’t open the crates.

_‘I can’t do this anymore.’_

***

“What am I transporting?” 

Bodhi cornered Galen in the hallway between the cantina and the pilot’s temporary quarters, backing him up against the wall with a clenched fist. Galen’s eyes widened, darting up toward the ceiling. He tugged Bodhi closer, throwing him off balance. “That is not a discussion for the hallway, pilot. For both our sake’s.”

Bodhi stepped back, touching Galen’s face with false softness, a performance for endlessly watching eyes. “At my shuttle then.”

Galen nodded and straightened the line of his uniform. “An hour.”

***

Bodhi watched the rain swirl into puddles at his feet, his hair trailing sodden beneath the collar of his flight suit. Every calm word Galen spoke felt like a spike of guilt drilling him into the ground. 

He never opened the crates, but he knew what he was carrying, just as he knew his father’s bones were still lying forgotten at the bottom of the mine. 

“I was a good man for too long,” Galen said.

Bodhi imagined, in great detail, how it would feel to draw back his arm and punch Galen right in the face. He thought of the thrill of blood dripping brightly onto that drab uniform, symbolic of every life Galen had let the Empire crush in their quest toward some insane destructive force. 

He could have laughed if he didn’t believe he deserved the same fate. He’d forgotten that he was supposed to hate them, let the mundanity of passing days steal the vibrancy of life from him, replaced with gray laid over gray. 

“You can’t unask a question,” Galen said, “You can only move forward with what you’ve learned.”

The water pooled at his feet, a rippling reflection of himself staring back up. He couldn’t afford to waver. Bodhi straightened his shoulders, tipping his chin up in determination, and looked Galen in the eye. 

“Tell me what I can do. To make this right.”

He felt lighter than he had in years. 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Rogue One Anniversary Day One: Favorite Character


End file.
